2018 marks the 50th Anniversary of the landmark papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which declared artificial birth control "intrinsically disordered" and marked an ethical line in the sand that has alternatively alienated and energized Catholics for the past 50 years. Mark Massa S.J. argues in his recent book, The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism, that the encyclical gave birth to a series of paradigm shifts in understanding what natural law is, and how it informs the moral life. Further, Massa examines the introduction of Humanae Vitae in order to make a case for how theological development is messy, disjointed, and hardly the result of one, unified, tradition.

Lisa Sowle Cahill, is the J. Donald Monan Professor of theology at Boston College. Cahill has taught at Boston College since 1976 and has also been a visiting professor at Georgetown and Yale Universities. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and is a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics. Her research interests include the history of Christian ethics, New Testament ethics, Catholic social ethics, feminist theology, bioethics, and the ethics of war and peace.

Meghan Clark is an associate professor of theology and religious studies at St. John's University in Queens, NY. Her research interests include Catholic social thought, human rights, solidarity, and global development. As a social ethicist, she focuses on questions of global health, economic development, participation, violence against women, and justice in theological ethics. Currently, she serves as a faculty expert for the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations coordinated by St. John’s Vincentian Center for Church and Society. She has conducted fieldwork on human rights and solidarity in Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. She is author of The Vision of Catholic Social Thought: the Virtue of Solidarity and the Praxis of Human Rights (Fortress Press, 2014) and won first place in Catholic Social Teaching in the 2015 Catholic Press Association Book Awards. Clark received her B.A. from Fordham University and her Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Boston College.

James Keenan, S.J. is Canisius Professor and director of The Jesuit Institute at Boston College. His work and research focus around theological ethics, including questions of embodiment, sexuality, Thomistic ethics and 20th Century Catholic moral theology. His most recent publications include University Ethics: How Colleges can Build and Benefit from a Culture of Ethics, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), and Paul and Virtue Ethics with Daniel Harrington (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). Forthcoming work includes, A Brief History of Catholic Ethics, expected from Paulist Press. Keenan received his A.B. from Fordham University, his M.Div. from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and his S.T.L. and S.T.D. from the Gregorian University in Rome.

Mark Massa, S.J. (author) is the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, where he is also professor of theology. Massa received his Ph.D. in American religion from Harvard University, and is the author of seven books. His most recent book, The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism will be published in fall 2018 by Oxford University Press. His monograph published in 1999, Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team, received the Alpha Sigma Nu Award for Best Work in Theology for 1999-2000. His ongoing area of research is American Catholic faith and culture of the past century.

Richard Gaillardetz (moderator) is the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic Theology at Boston College. His research interests center around the Second Vatican Council and the Catholic papacy, especially the papacy of Pope Francis; ecclesiology; sacramental theology; and questions of authority and its effects on spirituality and ministry. Gaillardetz is the current chair of the theology department at Boston College and was president of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in 2013-14. He has received numerous awards from both the Catholic Press Association and the Association of Catholic publishers and is a past recipient of the Sophia Award (2000). Recent publications include, An Unfinished Council: Vatican II, Pope Francis and the Renewal of Catholicism (Liturgical Press, 2015) and A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium (co-editor with Edward P. Hahnenberg, Liturgical Press, 2015). Gaillardetz received an A.B. from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.

IN THE NEWS

2018 marks fifty years since Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae. NPR’s Tom Gjelten surveys Catholics on what the encyclical’s teaching means for the U.S. Church today. Gjelten quotes Mark Massa, S.J.: “When people see what they regard as bad law, it breeds contempt for good law.” Gjelten questions whether U.S. Catholics “show in their daily lives that the church's official prohibition of artificial birth control means little in practice, even if it has some value in theory.” On Monday, November 5th, 2018 the Boisi Center hosted an “author meets critics” book panel on Massa’s most recent book.